A UC Berkeley journalism student who was detained Thursday after photographing demonstrations in Malhalla, Egypt, has been released, according to university officials.

James Karl Buck, 29, was detained while taking photographs at a protest over food prices in Malhalla, an urban industrial city in the Nile Delta.

Neil Henry, acting dean of the Cal’s graduate school of journalism, informed students in the department that James was released earlier this morning and is en route to Cairo.

“An Embassy official says James was treated well,” Henry stated in an e-mail to the department. “The U.S. officials are hoping to talk to him directly upon his return,” Henry told students.

Henry said Buck was released at about 3:45 p.m. local time in Egypt – about 6:45 a.m. in California – and was taking a taxi to Cairo. He missed the flight he had been scheduled for at 9:15 a.m. and was trying to book another.

Concern for Buck, who is a third-year student, was evident at the college, said Rob Gunnison, director of school affairs at the department. “From the time we got the news, there was concern all over the building,” Gunnison said today.

Buck was traveling in Egypt as a photographer and working on his master’s thesis project at UC Berkeley, where he is studying journalism and international area studies.

Buck was contacted by the Oakland Tribune on his cell phone Thursday afternoon, when he spoke briefly from a government building hallway in Mahalla.

According to Buck, he was interviewing the family members of local detainees who were in a recent protest when five police officers arrested him. He had been taking photographs at a protest against food prices in Mahalla, he said.

Buck, who has contacted friends, said he was being held without charges.

Buck said he was all right but was concerned for his Egyptian interpreter. “I’m afraid that they will throw him in prison and torture him,” he said.

He said he believed the authorities wanted to erase photos of demonstrations he had taken that day and then would release him.

In recent days, Buck sent friends e-mails of his travels, describing scenes in Mahalla.

“It’s been a crazy couple of days in Egypt,” he wrote in an e-mail prior to his arrest. “April 6, Sunday, was a planned strike at a large textile factory in the industrial city of Mahalla to protest rising food prices, but after a heavy-handed police crackdown prevent striking, riots erupted in the streets.”

Buck, who served as the Oakland Tribune’s multimedia intern in the summer of 2007 has visited Egypt twice before.